"Anna M. Jarvis campaigned for the creation of an official national holiday in the early 1900s to commemorate her mother, who had organized 'Mother's Friendship Days' to bring together moms who had been on opposing sides of the Civil War. She was following a tradition started by the poet Julia Ward Howe, who called for women to promote disarmament and peace in her Mother's Day Proclamation of 1870.

"Jarvis's petitioning paid off in 1914, when President Woodrow Wilson declared Mother's Day a national holiday to be celebrated the second Sunday of May. He called for a 'public expression of our love and reverence for the mothers of our country,' according to the New York Times."

In 1921, according to Bloomberg, Jarvis was outraged that on the holiday, the price of one flower was upped to $1.

"You are using a beautiful idea as a means of profiteering," Bloomberg reports she told a confectioner's convention in 1923. "As the founder of Mother's Day, I demand that it cease."

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